HAMLET

ACT 1:1
“Who’s there?”
“Thou art a scholar, speak to it Horatio”
“in the gross and scope of my opinion, this bodes some strange eruption to our
state”
“young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle”
“A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye”
1:2
“The memory be green”
“with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and dirge in
marriage”
“But now my cousin Hamlet, and my son”
[Aside] “A little more than kin and less than kind”
“Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun”
“I have that within which trappings show – these but the trappings and the suits
of woe”
“That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound in filial obligation”
“’tis unmanly grief”
“I shall in all my best obey you madam”
“O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew”
“Hyperion to a satyr”
“Frailty, thy name is woman”
“Like Niobe all tears”
“It is not, nor it cannot come to good: but break, my heart, for I must hold my
tongue”
“The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
“’A was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again”
 1:3
“Do you doubt that?”
“his will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth”
“or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity. Fear it Ophelia”
“Do not as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to
heaven, whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine himself the primrose path of
dalliance treads”
“Give thy thoughts no tongue”
“To thine own self be true”
“think yourself a baby”
“When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows”
1:4
“That for some vicious mole of nature in them”
“I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane”
“It will not speak; then I will follow it”
“My fate cries out”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
1:5
“If thou didst ever your father love…revenge his foul and most unnatural
murder”
“won to his shameful lust the will of my seemingly-virtuous Queen”
“O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there”
“it doth posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk”
“cut off even in the blossoms of my sin”
“Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest”
“Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me”
“O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”
“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain: at least I am sure it may be so in
Denmark”
 [Writes]… “Now to my word”
“O cursed spite, that I was ever born to set it right”
ACT 2:1
“Where did I leave?”
“Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth”
“How now Ophelia, what’s the matter?”
“Mad for thy love?”
“He raised a sigh so piteous and profound as it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
and end his being”
“as oft as any passion under heaven that does afflict our natures”
“have you given him any hard words of late?” – “No my good lord, but as you
did command I repel his letters” – “That hath made him mad”
2:2
[Flourish.]
“Hamlet’s transformation; so we call it, sith nor th’ exterior nor the inward man
resembles what it was”
“Thanks Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern” – “Thanks Guildenstern and
gentle Rosencrantz”
“I doubt it is no other but the main, his father’s death and our o’erhasty
marriage”
“Therefore brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outwards
flourishes, I will be brief”
“More matter less art”
“he’s mad ‘tis true, ‘tis true ‘tis pity, and pity ‘tis ‘tis true”
“That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase”
“At such a time, I’ll loose my daughter to him”
“Do you know me lord?” – “Excellent well, you are a fishmonger”
“For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion –
have you a daughter?”
“Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive”
 “What do you read my lord?” – “Words, words, words”
[Aside] “Though this be madness there be method in’t”
“You cannot sir take from me anything I will more willingly part withal –
except my life”
“My honoured lord” – “My most dear lord”
“Faith her privates we”
“Denmark’s a prison”
“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite
space, were it not that I have bad dreams”
[Aside to Guildenstern] “What say you?” – [Aside] “Nay then I have an eye of
you. If you love me, hold not off”
“this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory”
“no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours”
“What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason…how like a god: the beauty
of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of
dust?”
“the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history…or poem
unlimited”
“the rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, black as his purpose, did the night
resemble”
“his antique sword, rebellious to his arm”
“as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood, and like a neutral to his will and matter, did
nothing”
“you could for a need study some dozen or sixteen lines”
“O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”
“What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?”
“O vengeance! Why, what an ass am I”
“I, the son of a father murdered…must, like a whore, unpack my heart with
words”
“I’ll have grounds more relative than this – the play’s the thing wherein I’ll
catch the conscience of the King”
 ACT 3:1
“for your part Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of
Hamlet’s wildness”
“’Tis too much proved, that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do
sugar o’er the devil himself” – [Aside] “O ’tis too true”
“O heavy burthen!”
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”
“’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished”
“he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?”
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”
“the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”
“their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action”
“to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind”
“if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your
beauty”
“Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?”
“I did love you once”
“I loved you not”
“Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”
“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious”
“If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry – be thou as chaste
as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny”
“God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another”
“O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”
“The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword”
“O woe is me, t’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see”
3:2
“Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the
tongue”
 “let those who play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them”
“Give me that man who is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s
core…as I do thee”
“No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive”
“Do you think I meant country matters?”
“I think nothing, my lord”
“You are naught…I’ll mark the play”
“None wed the second but who killed the first” – [Aside] “That’s wormwood,
wormwood”
“Purpose is but the slave to memory”
“Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
“It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge” – “Still better, and worse”
“What, frighted with false fire!”
“but ‘While the grass grows’ – the proverb is something musty”
“Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play
upon me”
“It is backed like a weasel” – “Or like a whale?” – “Very like a whale”
“Now could I drink hot blood”
“Let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom”
“I will speak daggers to her, but use none”
“My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites”
3:3
“O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal curse upon’t, a
brother’s murder”
“like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause”
“My crown, mine own ambition, and my Queen. May one be pardoned and
retain th’ offence?”
“O limed soul, that struggling to be free, art more engaged!”
 “Bow stubborn knees”
“Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; and now I’ll do ’t”
“Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge”
“Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent”
“or about some act that hath no relish of salvation in ’t”
“This physic but prolongs thy sickly days”
[Rising] “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts
never to heaven go”
3:4
“I’ll silence me even here”
“Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended” – “Mother, you have my father
much offended”
“Have you forgotten me?” – “No by the rood, not so”
“You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, and would it were not so,
you are my mother”
“Where you may see the inmost part of you”
[Drawing] “How now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead”
“O what a rash and bloody deed is this!”
“Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king, and marry with his brother”
“Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty”
“Heaven’s face does glow o’er this solidity and compound mass with heated
visage”
“the counterfeit presentation of two brothers”
“Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself”
“Here is your husband like a mildewed ear, blasting his wholesome brother”
“at your age the hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble”
“O shame, where is thy blush?”
“to flaming youth let virtue be as wax, and melt in her own fire”
“These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears”
 [Enter GHOST] “Save me”
“Do not come your tardy son to chide”
“This visitation is to whet thy almost blunted purpose”
“O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience”
“O Hamlet thou hast cleft my heart in twain” – “throw away the worser part of
it, and live the purer with other half”
“I must be cruel only to be kind”
ACT 4:1
“There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves”
“Mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier”
“O heavy deed!”
“this vile deed we must with all our majesty and skill, both countenance and
excuse”
“transports his poisoned shot, may miss our name, and hit the woundless air”
4:2
“Take you me for a sponge my lord?” – “Ay sir, that soaks up the King’s
countenance, his rewards, his authorities”
“a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear”
4:3
“He’s loved of the distracted multitude”
“Diseases desperate grown by desperate measure are received”
“Not where he eats, but where he ’a is eaten”
“we fat ourselves for maggots”
“Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a
beggar”
“if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
the stairs into the lobby”
“I see a cherub that sees them”
“father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh; and so, my
mother”
 “for like the hectic in my blood he rages”
4:4
“we go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name”
“Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not debate the question of
this straw”
“How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge!”
“sure that he…gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us
unused”
“a thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom, and ever three parts
coward”
“Makes mouths at the invisible event”
“Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find
quarrel in a straw when honour’s at the stake”
“O from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth”
4:5
“Her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to
collection”
“so full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt”
“Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?”
“How do you pretty lady?”
“They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but
know not what we may be”
“Let in the maid, that out a maid, never departed more”
“Indeed without an oath I’ll make an end on’t”
“Young men will do’t if they come to’t, by cock, they are to blame”
“You promised me to wed. He answers, so would I ‘a done…an thou hadst not
come to my bed”
“Come, my coach”
“Poor Ophelia divided from herself”
 “The ocean overpeering of his list eats no the flats with more impiteous haste
than young Laertes”
“That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard”
“only I’ll be revenged most throughly for my father”
“O rose of May, dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia”
“I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died”
4:6
“He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET”
4:7
“The Queen his mother lives almost by his looks”
“But my revenge will come”
“High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow
shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes”
“That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, ‘Thus didst thou’”
“he cried out, ’t would be a sight indeed if one could match you”
“Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
a face without a heart?”
“There lives within the very flame of love, a king of wick or snuff that will
abate it”
“what would you undertake to show yourself in deed your father’s son more
than in words?”
“Revenge should have no bounds”
“he being remiss, most generous, and free from all contriving”
“There is a willow grows askant the brook, that shows his hoar leaves in a
glassy stream”
“an envious sliver broke, when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the
weeping brook”
“as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto
that element”
“her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her
melodious lay to muddy death”
 “Too much of water has thou poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears”
“yet it is our trick, nature her custom holds…when these are gone, the woman
will be out”
“I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze, but that this folly drowns it”
ACT 5:1
“Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own
salvation?”
“It must be ‘se offendendo’, it cannot be else”
“an act hath three branches; it is to act, to do, and to perform: argal she drowned
herself wittingly”
“If this had not been a gentlewoman, she would have been buried out a
Christian burial”
“there is no ancient gentleman but…grave-makers, they hold up Adam’s
profession” – “Was he a gentleman?” – “’A was the first that ever bore arms”
“the gallows does well, but how does it well? It does well to those that do ill”
“Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that ’a sings at grave-making?” –
“Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness”
“’Tis e’en so, the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense”
[Throws up a skull] “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once”
“how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the
first murder”
“This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches”
“Here’s fine revolution an we had the trick to see ’t”
“Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play loggats with them?
Mine ache to think on ’t”
“Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?” – “Ay, my lord, and of calves’ skins
too” – “They are sheep and calves which seek assurance in that”
“Whose grave’s this sirrah?” – “Mine sir”
“the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe”
“Faith e’en with losing his wits” – “Upon what ground?” – “Why here in
Denmark”
 “How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?”
[Takes the skull],,.“Alas poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio, a fellow of infinite
jest…he hath borne me on his back a thousand times”
“Where be your gibes now?...Quite chop-fallen?”
“To what base uses we may return, Horatio!”
“Her death was doubtful…yet here she is allowed her virgin crants… and the
bringing home of bell and burial”
“from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring”
“I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife”
“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis, whose phase of sorrow
conjures the wandering stars…This is I, Hamlet the Dane”
“though I am not splenitive and rash, yet I have something in me dangerous”
“I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of
love, make up my sum”
“I loved you ever – but it is no matter”
5:2
“our indiscretion sometimes serves us well when our deep plots do pall”
“They are not near my conscience”
“He hath killed my king, and whored my mother…is ’t not perfect conscience to
quit him with this arm?”
“To Laertes I forgot myself; for by the image of my cause I saw the very
portraiture of his”
“it is very hot” – “No believe me, ’tis very cold” – “It is indifferent cold my
lord, indeed”
“to know a man well, were to know himself”
“This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head”
“You will loose this wager my lord”
“thou wouldst not think how ill all ’s here about my heart – but it is no matter”
“it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman”
 “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; yet it will
come – the readiness is all…Let be”
“Give me your pardon sir, I’ve done you wrong”
“Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, that I have shot my arrow o’er
the house, and hurt my brother”
“I do receive your offered love like love, and will not wrong it”
“The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath”
“A hit, a very palpable hit”
“Hamlet, this pearl is thine, here’s to thy health”
“Our son shall win”
“Gertrude do not drink” – “I will my lord, I pray you pardon me”
“My lord, I’ll hit him now…[Aside] And yet ’tis almost against my conscience”
“They bleed on both sides”
“Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric. I am justly killed with mine
own treachery”
“Then, venom, to thy work” [Stabs the KING]
“Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, drink off this potion”
“Exchange forgiveness with me noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death
come not upon thee, nor thine on me” [Dies] – “Heaven make thee free of it”
“Wretched Queen, adieu”
“Horatio, I am dead, thou livest; report me and my cause aright to the
unsatisfied”
“I am more an antique Roman than a Dane”
“in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story…What warlike
noise is this?”
“I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras, he has my dying voice”
“So tell him, with th’ occurrents more and less which have solicited. The rest is
silence” [Dies]
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing
thee to thy rest”
 “give order that these bodies high on a stage be placed to the view”
“you shall hear of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements,
casual slaughter”
“Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage”
“Take up the bodies – such a sight as this becomes the field, but her shows
much amiss. Go bid the soldiers shoot”